Shazam hits OS X, identifies music anywhere it plays

You might use Shazam to identify music on your smartphone, but what about the desktop? If you use a Mac, you’re in luck. The music recognition engine is bringing itself onto the Mac, making a home on your Menu Bar.

The app, which is free, sits quietly in the menu bar, waiting for music to play. Once it does, Shazam attempts to identify it for you, and a little pop-up window gives you info about the song. Click on the icon, and your recent searches will come up. If you click on the list item or pop-up, you’ll be redirected to a Shazam page for the song and artist, replete with lyrics.

The nicest part of this app is that it runs in the background, and identifies everything. Play a YouTube video? It will find the song. Watch a movie trailer, and it finds the music for you. If you’re in a coffee shop and a song comes on, Shazam can find that for you as well.

Shazam says the app is a bit of an experiment, born of their work with Siri on iOS 8. The incoming hands-free Siri utility on iOS 8 will have a close Shazam tie-in, and OS X Yosemite will also be very closely related to iOS 8. So far, it seems like a neat app that makes good use of the mobile/desktop crossover Apple is going for.